Going Home

Ohio is still home to me.  I can’t say I enjoy the snow and scraping ice off the windshield, but it is still home.  This week I had a business trip to Ohio.  I was able to spend an evening seeing my mom, my two brothers, sister-in-law, nephew, and niece.  Oh, and their very friendly and very shedding dog.  Not only did I gain a feeling of love from their wonderful dog, I gained LOTS of dog hair all over my clothes.

I had a very enjoyable evening catching up with family.  Thanks!  (And no, I’m not going to mention I told you the wrong date that I would visit.)

 My brother and mom

My “little" nephew and elegant niece all dressed up for a concert by their high school orchestra.  I’m on a stool!

Traveling story: I had to fill up with gas.  The credit card machine didn’t work at the first pump.  I had to maneuver around a few cars and got to another pump.  The credit machine worked, but then the receipt didn’t print.  So, I had to go inside.  I made some snarky comment that both of those pumps didn’t work.  The cashier says “All of our pumps don’t work all of the time.”  OK.  I wasn’t happy that Speedway can’t keep the maintenance up on their pumps, but at least the cashier is honest!

San Antonio and Back

 

The TMS Conference is an extremely busy conference.  Everyday I left the RV park at 6:00 am to take a bus to the convention center and got back after 9 pm.  So I didn’t do any sightseeing during the week (unless you count the view outside the bus while it's dark).  John was able to go golfing with a group at the RV park one day.

 

We visited San Jose Mission on Saturday plus I walked it on the final morning since it’s close to the RV park.  We’ve seen it several times, but I love the little details.
 

 

One the way back, we stopped one night with John’s brother Jack in Beaumont Texas.  For our 2^nd night, our primary stop was full and our secondary stop was just questionable looking, so we stayed in a Walmart again.  It’s weird how we never stayed during our full-timing but we’ve “Walmarted” it twice on this trip.

 

Life at a Walmart

The drive through Louisiana was interesting.  At certain points you are driving through a swamp.  I bet the highway was difficult and expensive to build.

 

We’ve done it!  We finally stayed overnight at a Walmart parking lot.  If you didn’t know, most Walmarts are OK with RV’s staying the night.  RV’ers will normally buy something (we did) and it doesn’t cost them anything to have us park.  Many RV’ers have stayed in a Walmart parking lot.  A certain type of RV’er will stay most of their time in Walmarts.  We had plans to stay somewhere else, but the primary and backup stops kind of fell through.  We’ve always kept Walmart as an alternative stop.

The protocol is to find a place on the outskirts of the parking lot and keep the RV buttoned up (ie. don’t open up the slides).  There were a few trucks nearby, but no RV’s stayed the night.  It’s certainly not the quietest place we’ve stopped.  This Walmart was right beside a highway. Since we are in Houston, we were able to get 105 channels on the antennae, which is the most we’ve ever got.  But I didn’t like the opportunities for a morning walk.  Other than a walk through the store, it wasn’t a good area for walking.

Baton Rouge Old Capital Building

Louisiana has had capital buildings everywhere.  Mostly, the capital of Louisiana has been in either New Orleans or Baton Rouge, but it’s been in several other towns.  While sometimes the capital is in a building actually built for it, they’ve held senate and house sessions in taverns, convents, hotels, and theaters.  It seems that the capital is in Baton Rouge because they wanted a town with good transportation on the Mississippi and because New Orleans was just too tempting to state representatives and senators.  Too little work and too many scandals occurred in New Orleans!

The Old Capital is just gorgeous.  The stain glass is amazing!

 

A lot of museums have films.  Most are pretty lame.  The movie at the Old Capital was given from the viewpoint of a ghost with all kinds of special effects.  Very cool! Oh, and this capital looks like a castle. 

Mark Twain wrote about it in “Life on the Mississippi”.  At the time, the building had suffered from a fire during the Civil War.  It was being rebuilt to look as it now does.  “… is not conceivable that this little sham castle would ever have been built if he [Sir Walter Scott] had not run the people mad…It is pathetic enough, that a whitewashed castle, with turrets and things – materials all ungenuine within and without, pretending to be what they are not - should ever have been built in this otherwise honorable place: but it is much more pathetic to see this architectural falsehood undergoing restoration and perpetuation in our day, when it would have been so easy to let dynamite finish what a charitable fire began…”
 

 Just because I think it’s cool, I’m including this here.  Here’s Louis Armstrong bugle that he used as he was first learning to play.

 

Huey Long

Huey Long was governor in Louisiana and made quite a splash.  We heard his story everywhere we went.  He was either a governor of the common people helping build roads and improve education, or he was incredibly corrupt, or he was both.  As governor, he pushed through the current capital building during the Depression.  It’s the tallest capital building in the U.S.

The theme is Art Deco.  It reminded me of Ghostbusters and I expected to see Gozer. 

The floor is made from lava from Vesuvius with 26 different types of marble in the walls.  Surprisingly, the building was only $5 million and built in 14 months.

There’s viewing on the 27^th floor, though the building continues up to the 34^th floor.

Huey Long was assassinated in the halls of his capital.  There is a bullet hole in the marble column where he was shot.

Huey Long was buried in front of the capital with over 100,000 people in attendance.

 

If you go to Baton Rouge, you will definitely see the capital building.  It’s the tallest building in town.  BTW, visit the Armory Museum too.  It’s small, but worth the short walk.

 

Morning Adventure

 

You know me and my morning walks.  Well, today we’re in Baton Rouge.  The campground is very near the Mississippi River.  So I decided to walk to the river.  Now most people would walk along the nice and neat paved walkway along the top of the levee.  But I wanted to go right to the Mississippi. That involved navigating puddles in the grass, weaving through marsh areas, breaking through branches of brambles, stepping through hills of kudzu, and then crossing a flat of mud.  I actually did well until the mud.  It was sandy mud, so I slide into it and coated my shoes and jeans with mud.  Ah, adventures! 

 

 

At 6:30 in the morning, the Mississippi is quiet.  Barges and ships had pulled over to the shore all along the river.  I wonder how that works.  They pull over and sleep for the night?  Do they have TV or something?  Internet?  Or do they just read a book?   Maybe they have a small boat so they can motor into town.  I can tell you that they wouldn’t come ashore by walking.  I saw several animal prints, but most humans are too smart to walk in this area.

 

By 7:00 am, the ships start moving along the river.  At times it sounds like a highway with big trucks passing.

The funny thing was that I found two golf balls in the weeds.  I wonder if the guys on the ships get bored and just hit a few balls off the bow?

On the Way to a Conference

Every year I go to a metals conference.   This year it is in San Antonio.  Since that isn’t very far, we decided to take the RV versus me flying and staying in a hotel.

On the way we drove through Mobile.  Mobile has been in the news recently with the Carnival cruise line.  The ship is still parked there in the harbor.  Right now I’m glad we have our own bathroom in the RV!

 

We are staying in a fascinating campground just south of Baton Rouge.  It’s a combination horse center and campground.  No internet or cable, but it has water, electricity, and good signal for several channels.  Plus, we can watch horses in the field or training!